The Gallic Druid priestess Norma has an illicit liaison with the Roman general Pollione, to whom she has born two children. But Pollione is now in love with the younger priestess Adalgisa and intends to desert Norma. Norma swears revenge, calls for an uprising against the occupying army and announces that she will unmask a traitress. But at the last moment she sacrfices not Adalgisa, but herself.

Richard Wagner, who conducted “Norma in Riga in 1837 and saw in it “the ideal example of a musical tragedy”, wrote about the belcanto opera of Vincenzo Bellini (1801–1835): “We should not be ashamed to shed tears of emotion when we hear it … Bellini is one of my favourites, because his music is strongly felt and closely connected with the text”. The poetical staging of the late film, opera and play director Werner Schroeter (d.2010) develops its fascination entirely out of the singing of the principal and the conflict which eats into her inner being.

***Vincenzo Bellini
NORMA

Opera in two acts
Libretto by Felice Romani after a drama by Louis Alexandre Soumet